


the world to come

by riverbed



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Brooding, Daddy Issues, Depression, Dirty Talk, Family Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Judaism, Let's be honest, M/M, Porn With Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 08:13:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6603439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbed/pseuds/riverbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in the army, john knows where he stands. he's sure of what he's a part of - he knows what they strive for. and he knows he's on the right side of history.</p><p>back in charleston, an endless battle with identity, pride, and family secrets rages on, and john's loyalties are no less sure, but just how personal the stakes of john's ambitions are, alexander never knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world to come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fullmetalpetticoat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmetalpetticoat/gifts).



> this is a canon-era au in which the laurens family is an influential, wealthy jewish clan (suspend your disbelief.) john struggles to reconcile this history with his father's slaveowning/trading, and this results in struggles with identity. it's something imagined from the mind of a white jew, so i tried to consult everyone i could to make sure this was not voyeuristic or gross since it's not my place to speak too far on the topic of american slavery. people were very kind to offer their thoughts as well as their blessings while i was writing this, so thanks to everyone who did.
> 
> i want this to be something anyone can read, so here's a quick crash course on judaism-specific things i used in here, for reference:  
> 1\. the story is set at passover, which is the seven- (or eight-)day festival celebrating the liberation of the jews from the egyptian pharoah's enslavement and which, coincidentally, starts on april 22 of this year. during passover we clear our houses of chametz, or food made with grain and fermented. we recite the haggadah, the story of the tribes' escape from egypt, during a highly ritualistic meal called the seder.  
> 2\. _the torah_ dictates that the firstborn son of a jewish family fast the day before passover as thanks to G-d for sparing the firstborns of the israelite families during the plagues sent to egypt, but as mentioned here, the usual interpretation of this allows for the firstborn to exempt himself from this fast. i have no idea why, to be honest; i'm kinda of the opinion that there's no good reason for the son not to fast, and i also don't know exactly when this alteration started being tradition, so i left it in. this was purely selfish.  
>  3\. "oren" is a hebrew name that means "pine" or "ash." i personally named john's grandfather figure in this the "ash" translation to reflect john's subtle fears of age and mortality. dust to dust.  
> 4\. maror just means bitter herbs. we eat those during the seder to remind us of our ancestors' bitter fight held in slavery.  
> 5\. after a family's patriarch has passed away, it is traditional for the person reciting the haggadah during seder to say something along the lines of "father, i will ask you the four questions;" it's a double meaning, speaking both to G-d and to the blood father, and implies the father's death.  
> 6\. about the title of the story; the World to Come is the way jews commonly refer to the hereafter/afterlife.
> 
> anything else i think?? is pretty easy to follow along with; if i've missed something just ask and i'll make sure to address it
> 
> kindly let me know if this is out of line, and also if you like it. i'd really appreciate it. it's one of the most personal things i've written for fandom in some ways, so i hope i've managed to portray it as nothing more than my own imagined alienation with such a situation. john struggles with feeling responsible for his father's slaves, whom he loves as family members, and guilt that he feels that way, convinced that they should not be burdened with his pity. that should be made abundantly clear.
> 
> i'm gifting it to fullmetalpetticoat because she is my jewish partner in crime

Alex broaches the topic very sneakily, as he does. I know you’re going home for your leave, he says. Laving his tongue over John’s collarbone. Want to see home, make home with you. John laughs, and then he gasps when Alexander bites down.

In a stupid underestimation of Hamilton’s persistence, he thinks it a silly, fleeting thought and kisses it away. Alexander wakes him in the morning by poking his ribs, and it hurts, because John’s been on soldier’s rations for so long and the bones are just beneath the skin. He glowers at Alex, and Alex just smiles, bites his lip. Nags about coming home with him, and sprawls out pretty against the bedroll. He looks back over his shoulder at John through lowered lashes, and John falls for it easily, runs right up against it and crashes, hard. 

*

A few weeks later, and they are riding through South Carolina, horses lazy with the late-spring humidity. They let them meander on the path, beaten down through the woods. John knows these woods by heart, remembers specific gumtrees and the exact gray of this stretch of the river. Alexander is not accustomed to forest such as this and as dusk falls he becomes fascinated with the settling of the wildlife, the quiet that falls in around them. Alexander dismounts his mare, leads her on foot to the bank of a small stream as John on his own mare pauses and looks on. The horse drinks, with long, slow laps of the tongue.

Alexander looks back at him, an affect of shyness, little coquette again, and John levels his eyes at him from astride his horse. He straightens his back, gripping the pommel of his saddle with both hands. Alex ties his horse and goes back to the stream, drops his breeches and his stockings and sits at the side with his bare feet in the water. John gets off his horse.

“I used to play here,” he tells Alexander. He goes a little farther down the damp bank, points across into the trees. “There’s swampland there. I used to run and run. I’d feel my boots sink in.” He closes his eyes. “They’d get muddy and I’d come here and wash them, ruin the leather. Henry would buy me new ones every winter and by fall they’d be in rags.”

“You call your father Henry.” John looks back. Alexander is smiling at him, but he looks curious, as if debating himself on whether to press the topic. John studies him, the open expression of invitation, the way his thighs are parted and the fabric of his loose shirt over them hangs into the still water. He plods back over to him, drops to his knees and stares at him as he begins to unbutton his own shirt.

“I grow tired of your ruse of innocence, Alexander,” he says lowly. He finishes the last button of his shirt and moves to Alexander’s, pushing the wet hem up to rest a palm on his stomach. Alexander shivers, though his hand and the water are warm. “You touch me, but I know the difference when your touches are cold. I’m freezing when I miss you, little spitfire.” He smiles, a little sadly, bringing his other hand to Alex’s face. He cups his cheek and nuzzles their noses together, presses their foreheads close.

“I know you can only be warm when we’re alone,” John relents, sighing at the bittersweetness of the admission. In truth, it makes him feel special - though he sometimes longs for the unfamiliar luxury of openness, he also savors the little shivers that run down his spine when Alex lays a flat hand on the small of his back, the promise in a wink shot across a crowded room. 

Alex puts a hand on his waist, leaning sideways into him. “You said we wouldn’t have to camp.” It’s breathed soft against his neck, and John huffs a laugh.

“We’re close, less than an hour. We could go on yet.”

Alexander snickers, laying a soft kiss against his neck. “On second thought, I think I rather like the amenities,” he tells him.

“They’ll be expecting us,” he tells Alexander without conviction, because his hand is still under his shirt, feeling the relaxed muscles in his stomach. He feels the pulse of where they’re connected, hand at his own waist and looping back through him to Alex’s. His skin is starting to singe; Alexander is a little furnace and the nighttime this close to the river, shielded by greenery with all its leaves, is thick with humidity.

Hamilton is tracing patterns onto his waist with his thumb. “Let them wait,” he whispers, kissing John’s neck, slowly, the same way he’d lavish in his mouth. John turns and makes it so, going lightheaded as Alex sighs into him and deepens the kiss, flicking his tongue against the roof of John’s mouth, insistent and playful. Alex suddenly nips his lip hard and John gasps, pulls away, glares at him. “You little brat,” he chides, but his cock is already stirring even as he says it. 

Alexander smiles something very mischievous. “C’mon, John. We’re on your turf,” he says. He leans back in and shamelessly takes John’s earlobe between his teeth. “Don’t make it easy for me. Fight back.”

*

They wake gradually, wrapped around one another with the slight morning chill, birds of all kinds harmonizing in a good morning to the forest. Alexander is still radiating his considerable body heat and John snuggles close to him to share it. His friend’s shoulders are bare and he studies the marks he’s left on his smooth skin, little bruises healing purple against deep tan. John leans down to run his tongue along one of them, close down to his collarbone, and Alex yelps and squirms, swatting at his side as he comes fully awake. John grins.

“We’re going to get attacked, sleeping out here on leaves like tramps,” Alex says. “We could have been eaten by _bears,_ John Laurens. Bears.”

John laughs into Alex’s hair. “I think the bears stay closer inland, love.”

“A bird, then! They hate me. You would endanger me so?” Alex disentangles himself from John and John lets out an unhappy little growl. He sits up and watches Alexander gather the strewn-about pieces of his outfit that he’d lost in their tussle last evening - he dresses, and when he gets his cravat on he looks good as new, bright-eyed and freshly pressed. John will never understand how he does that. He comes over to John and buttons his shirt for him, frowning at the grass stains. “How do you manage to get so filthy?” he asks.

“Influence of company,” he retorts, and Alexander cuffs him on the crown. He shakes his head, tying up John’s cravat. “Thought I tempered you out last night, you burned off enough steam.”

“The trouble is my blood runs hot for you,” John tells him shamelessly. “If you like you could cut me open, see if the bears will come before it cools.”

Alexander studies him, clearly taken aback. He has never been all that comfortable with John’s dark humor, nor his especially dark… interests. John feels a little bad for springing it on him in such a context, but Alex is always lauding over plainspeak, insisting he say just what he’s thinking. What he’s thinking of is lying on this leafbed with Alex over him knife open in his hand.

But he also wants to beat the heat of the day, so he rises and sets about to gathering his own clothing. Alexander gathers some berries to feed the horses while he dresses the rest of the way, and then they mount and ride off, John up ahead to lead the way for the last stretch of their journey.

They are met at the end of the drive by an ornate carriage, and John hops down to embrace the driver as Alex waves politely from atop his saddle. The man runs his eyes down him appraisingly, and then gives him a knowing look. Alex wonders at that.

“Y'all want me to take you up?” Oren’s smile is easy, but John shakes his head. “We’ll ride in. We’ve come this far,” he says, clapping the old man on the shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re home, Jacky. You have been missed.”

John smiles, wishing with all his might that he didn’t have to look Oren in the eye.

*

The thing is everything around this feels like home, but the moment he steps into this house, John feels ill, on edge. The town a few miles up is where he’d made his schoolfriends - the woods, where they’d made their first marks on the world together, carving their names into the soft bark of innocent trees, the beach where they’d lain too late under the stars and promised each other that they’d rearrange them someday.

Now, half those friends are dead. The other half are politicians. John doesn’t much care for the company of either. But they are still good memories.

Alex is visibly awed by the main house. He trails his fingers on the columns outside and traces them over the doorframe as he enters, and he clicks the heels of his boots just to hear them echo off the polished hardwood. The house is bustling, and John lets it comfort him for a scant few seconds before he’s tense again.

Alex shuffles his feet, and John can tell the initial fascination has worn off. John puts a gentle hand on his shoulder and feels him melt under it. He tries to channel the shaking into his other hand.

“Jack!” The voice is booming and they both turn toward it as John’s father, a large man round in his age, comes through an archway off the foyer. He holds his arms out and John lets him wrap him in them, though he keeps his own at his sides. “Hello, Father,” he says dryly when they part. He looks relieved at the break of contact, Alex thinks. He wonders what it must be like to see your father after so long - though he knows he’ll never get the chance, he thinks he would never want an embrace like that to end.

John clears his throat. “Might I present Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, my most cherished friend and a fellow aide to General Washington.” He gestures to Alex rather royally, as if he should be commanding the attention of the room. Alex fights down the blush he feels heating him and extends his hand, unprepared for the thorough thrashing it gets from Mr. Laurens in the man’s enthusiasm.

“Pleasure, Sir!” he exclaims, laughing a little as Henry squeezes his hand. “Any friend of Jack’s is always welcome in this house, my boy. I’m so pleased that you’ll be joining us for Passover. Please, consider this your home while you are here. Make yourself comfortable.” He looks Alexander up and down, seems to linger on his nose before making a decision. “Tell me, Alexander, where’s your family from?”

Alex looks to John nervously. “Unimportant,” John says. “Alex isn’t Jewish, Father. This will be his first Passover.” Alex’s heart starts beating very fast, but the elder Laurens seems nothing but thrilled. “Then we must make it a doubly happy celebration!” he impassions. He turns, gesturing to the arch he came through. “Come, boys. Everyone is outside for the heat. Jack, your siblings will be so excited.”

Alex smiles. He finds himself wondering how John could resent such an amiable man.

*

The lawn is bright green and John hugs each of his siblings before taking a seat on a wooden bench and patting for Alex to sit beside him. Mary Eleanor abandons the tea party she has set out on a picnic blanket and climbs into John’s lap, and John has a grin plastered to his face, holding her tiny frame tightly. The little girl eyes Alex cautiously as he looks on with affection, happy to see John so at-ease. She leans in and whispers to her brother urgently, and John tosses his head back and giggles. “No, no, sweetheart. He’s a friend.”

Alex conjures his warmest smile, wondering absently what she’d asked. Mary Eleanor seems to decide Alex is trustworthy, lying her head on John’s shoulder, and John runs his hands through her tangled baby curls. James and Henry Jr. seem totally uninterested in the homecoming in favor of their continued roughhousing, and the eldest daughter, Martha, busies herself with gathering the tea set in the blanket and tying it off before lying out on the grass to watch the clouds.

Henry pours three glasses from a pitcher of lemonade, walking over to hand one to each of the young men. Alex takes his with thanks, sipping the ice-cold drink gratefully. John drinks around his younger sister, then offers some to her. “Both hands,” he says, guiding the bottom of the glass as her little fingers struggle to wrap around it.

“So,” Henry Sr. starts, settling into a chair at the wooden table across from them and surveying the property. “Are you given the week?”

“We are given two!” Alex says, cutting John off. Henry leans back and laughs. He laughs like John does.

“Excellent!” he says, and then he furrows his brow. “I will have a housemaid prepare a room for you, Alexander. I apologize, I was not aware of your accompanying John.”

Alexander waves his free hand at him, dismissing the fret. “I apologize for imposing, Sir,” he says, sucking on a cube of ice.

“Nonsense. Like I said, my boy, you are always welcome.” He scans the yard again. “The gardens are overgrowing. I should remind Oren to tend to them more thoroughly.”

“Or you could do it yourself,” John mutters under his breath. He shakes himself a bit and turns a sweet smile up at his father, an expression Alex recognizes as entirely false. “Oren is seventy years old now, Father. Would you not rather I go and do it? Since I’m home, I might as well make myself useful.”

Henry regards him curiously. “Don’t be silly, John. This should be time for you to rest.” His voice is just as commanding as it was between the marble walls of the foyer - it reminds Alex of General Washington. He knows Mr. Laurens has great success speaking at Congress, and he can see why - his presence is imposing, and he seems to wield that with practiced skill.

John is scowling, now, not even keeping up the pretense. Mary Eleanor climbs from his lap into Alex’s own, and though Alex has no experience holding children he cradles her as comfortingly as he can, patting her head as she buries her face into the shoulder of his jacket. John takes the opportunity to stand, and Alex flinches back before he can stop himself, knowing an infamous John Laurens rage is imminent. John is vibrating, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides as if to keep them focused on not punching his father. “You would make an old man work in the blistering heat over your able-bodied son,” he says very slowly, his tone low. “He does everything you do not wish to do yourself.”

Henry chuckles. “Of course he does, John. I don’t have time to -“

“All you have is time.” John leans forward on the balls of his feet, his heels coming up. It’s an unconscious thing he does, looming. Alex has shriveled under that move exactly twice - once when he’d conspired with Lafayette to pull a stupid prank on Laurens, and once more when he’d hidden himself away from work for a few days during one of his foul moods. John had been angry, unable to understand that he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed. It had nearly broken Alexander; he was unused to having someone else care enough to battle him, and it felt like kicking him while he was down. John had left Alexander crying that morning in a frustrated flurry and not returned till evening, but when he came back he’d climbed quietly into Alexander’s cot behind him and pressed his nose into his hair and inhaled him, and Alex sobbed but he felt the rift between them close.

And it had only been a couple more days before he had felt well again. The men had clapped him on the back, saying they’d mourned his absence, and John had nodded in acknowledgement.

“Honestly, John,” Henry says. His eyes are dark but he’s making an effort to appear unaffected. “Not even an hour home and you wish to fight with me. I will have Lily do it if it offends you so. I know how close you are to the old man,” he laughs, and it does not seem like the answer John wants, but he accepts it. Shuts up, sits back down. Alex looks over little Mary’s head at him and resists the urge to reach out to him, run a soothing hand down his shoulder to bring him down.

*

They spend the afternoon wandering the back grounds. John shows him the stables, the rose gardens and greenhouses, the shady oak two ramshackle swings are hung from, fraying rope tied to planks of scrap board. Alex sits on one and kicks off.

“I always wanted to fly,” he says, spreading his arms out, and John comes around and gives him a good push to get him going higher. John laughs. “You’re the tallest you’ve ever been, baby girl,” he teases, and Alex drags his feet in the dirt to stop the swing and sticks his tongue out at him. John grabs it with his thumb and forefinger and holds it, and Alex splutters. “You wanna talk back?” John says. Alex shivers, shakes his head slowly. He sees Alex roll his shoulders back. John lets go. He grins. “Good,” he says, and kisses Alex soundly.

*

John sneaks around upstairs when the house falls quiet that night, forgoing a candle - he knows his way in the dark. The room prepared for Alexander is in another corridor, and he is pleased to find the door unlocked. He slips in and latches it behind him, leaning against the door.

Alex is reading by lantern light, sitting cross-legged in the center of the large bed. “Why, Mister Laurens,” he says, looking up from his papers. “It’s rather improper, don’t you think? Being in a guest’s room after dark?”

John grins, all teeth, and shuffles across the room to dive onto the bed, and Alex giggles as he collapses back under John’s weight. He steals the laughter from him with a deep kiss, both of them pulling away a little breathless. “If my guest were a lady, I might consider propriety. As it is…” He tugs at Alexander’s undershirt, slipping his hand under the neckline to bare his shoulder.

“Your guest is a whore, less deserving of such regards?” Alex’s mouth is curled in an ironic smirk. John kisses it away again.

*

Final preparations for the Seder are made the following day, servants bustling around them as John gives him a grand tour of the house itself. He marvels at the paintings in the halls of John’s ancestors, and John knocks on a large door, newer than the rest, on the lower floor.

“Come in,” calls Henry from inside. Oren, the carriage driver, is standing next to Mr. Laurens, who is seated at his desk. “Boys! I’m happy to see you. I was just finishing the arrangements that need to be made for our other guests this evening.”

“I was just showing Alex the house, Father,” John says, going to the desk to pull a second chair around it. “For God’s sake, Oren, have a seat.”

Alex doesn’t miss the disapproving look Henry gives John, nor does he miss the tiny fire in John’s eyes as the old man sits. Alex imagines his bones creaking, years of hard work for the ungrateful. He thinks back to working for his landlord on Nevis to earn his keep, hours on trips balanced by equal scribbling away in an office with plenty of time to write his own journals. He considers what it might be like to have his free time belong to someone else.

*

Guests arrive in throngs, John’s grandfather on his mother’s side, cousins and second cousins, family friends John and his siblings have known so long they call them Uncle and Auntie. He kisses cheeks and offers congratulations and condolences on marriages and deaths that are news to him, meets new spouses and babies. Joy. He remembers Mary Eleanor being born, holding her for the first time as a teenager and feeling his blood stir with a fierce protectiveness.

His mother dying a month later and not being able to let her go; having to hold Martha, too, through bouts of near-endless sobbing. Henry Jr. and James not really grasping the full breadth of what was going on. Their father in a constant state, his temper spiraling.

It makes him livid, the fact that he’d been so young and had to deal with all of it. He’d pulled the family back together - him and the servants, who kept the house running smoothly in Eleanor’s sudden absence. He remembers his father yelling at them as if they were in the way, as if he contributed in the least to the plantation not burning to the ground. He remembers it and it makes him want to set it on fire himself.

Partway through the afternoon, as his father schmoozes his way about, he slips out, stands on the porch and stares out at the rice fields as he regulates his breathing. And he feels like running, so he does, sprints into the woods just outside the property. He slumps against a thick trunk and sits there with his head in his hands, miserable and exhausted though he doesn’t really know precisely why. He wishes Alexander would find him. He regrets bringing Alexander anywhere near this place.

Around him squirrels and birds make one last round through the underbrush for food, and then they burrow in for the night as darkness starts to wrap the swampy woodland in its peace. John imagines himself as static as one of the trees, imagines his roots shooting through his soles and tying themselves to some he’d planted before, finding some of this acreage he’d claimed as a boy, before he’d been forced into becoming a man.

He holds a little bit of dirt in his palm and says a formal goodbye to certain pieces of himself. He decides they are better off left here, as ripe soil.

Maybe something better will grow of them, something more useful than years of resentment and discontent.

His stomach growls. It is almost time to eat. He rises and wipes his soiled hands on his trousers before hauling his sore body back to the house.

*

“Is it not the custom for the firstborn to weasel his way out of the fast?” His uncle drives his elbow into John’s ribs playfully as he hovers over the table, laid out with the vegetables. His uncle has a glass of brandy in hand, though John thinks better of pointing out that it is he who knows not the custom.

“I prefer the fast,” he deadpans. “It lets my head clear with my body.”

His uncle shrugs. His sweet wine sloshes as he sips from it. “You always were the brooding one, Jacky.”

*

John actually likes the maror. He looks forward to them each year against the sweet of the wine. “They embittered us with hard work,” his father says, holding up his goblet. “Our God redeemed not only our fathers from Egypt, but us with them. He took us from freedom to joy, and from deep darkness to great light and from bondage to redemption. Therefore we recite to his power: Hallelujah Lord Our God.” He drinks as most of the room recites.

John looks down, staring into his cup. He glances over at Alexander, who is following along as best he can but is nervously chewing some of his matzah ripped from the piece. John gives him an open smile, and Alex grins and takes a sip of his wine. His lips are stained red when he emerges from behind his glass.

John does his piece after the meal, _May the Merciful One find us in inheritance of that day which is all good,_ and a woman recently married into the family seems to be explaining the significance to Alexander and James, who will reach bar mitzvah in the year, as he recites each section. They nod along - Alexander seems thrilled to be learning something new.

“Young lions are in need and go hungry,” and he looks at Alex, who perks up at him, while saying it, “but those who seek His guidance never lack for good.” He takes a sip of his own wine to allow him a moment’s repose, forgetting whether it’s permitted. Liquid courage as he powers through the last of the blessing. “Blessed is the man who trusts the Lord, and the Lord will be his trust.”

He swallows too much wine at once. He has a wild fantasy of the house crumbling to the ground.

* 

“Well, the dinner was delicious,” Alex says. It’s an attempt at a joke, but John whirls around on him, backs him into a corner. 

“God _damn_ the dinner!” John roars. “The _servants_ made the dinner! I hate eating from plates made up for me as if I am incapable.” He looks at Alexander but he does not see him. Heat in his eyes, heat all through his face. His shoulders tensed and his spine straightened to its full length. He’s doing that thing again. Looming. He stands so close, so Alex can feel the heat pulsing off him.

Alexander bravely grabs his hands with his own. Raises them to his mouth and kisses the momentum from the knuckles. “I hate feeling useless,” John mumbles, looking away as if embarrassed. “I hate… that they think I should feel _better than_ because of our money. I don’t want anything I haven’t earned. I hate this family, their hypocrisy, their smugness. _When will you give up this game._ It doesn’t make any sense that he should ask me such a thing, on a festival of freedom!”

Alexander nods, rubs his thumbs across John’s knuckles. He doesn’t know what to say, so he lets the quiet sit. It _had_ been quite a shitshow. They had been engaged in various discussions, Alex happy to listen and ask questions of some extended family members of John’s while the Laurens men had stood together in a corner, at first in prayer but then it had turned - heated. James had seen it before Alexander had, the way their body language snapped, identical. Alex could only sit and watch as Henry held white-knuckled to John’s shoulder and got in his face, both of them hurling terse Hebrew. Some of the women gasped, and James hid his face in a sofa cushion, and Martha had hastened to pick up Mary Eleanor and take her into the kitchen.

“He thinks liberation is a game,” John chokes, and it’s as if he’s realizing it for himself. “All of this - this war is on paper for him; the rebellion is simply literature. Nothing is tangible from his palace on high.”

Alex nods again. “What did you mean when you said you’d like to ask him the four questions?”

John groans, slaps a hand to his own face. “I can’t believe I said that to him.” He breaks away from Alex, paces the room. “It means I wish he was dead.” Alex’s eyes widen for a moment. He sits on the edge of the bed and looks down at the floor, thinking.

“I get it,” Alex says. John looks at him, confused. “All of this,” Alexander elaborates, flourishing at the room around them. “Growing up like this, indebted to slaves. Knowing your people had been slaves. Reconciling that.”

John nods. He crosses back to where Alexander sits; his own bed, the old wrought iron frame he’d slept in as a teenager. The mattress is worn and still as comfortable as ever, and John craves its soft cradling, so he flops down next to Alex, who rubs his back in soothing circles. The bed creaks under his sudden weight. John relaxes slowly into the bedspread, letting himself sink under for once. Alexander will fight like a rabid wolf to protect him; he has seen it. Where his father would let him fall, Alexander would be there to catch him.

“You have something in you,” Alex starts, and then he seems to rework the words; he pauses, and his hand pauses, too, on John’s lower back. Finally he untucks his shirt and pushes it up, skin on skin and John wants more of it immediately, feels warm and anchored where Alex’s palm covers the base of his spine. “You are something new, John. All of us are a shift from this generation before us. The world isn’t ready yet but we’re taking it anyway.”

“Alex.”

“John.” Alexander trails his fingers down his spine where his back is exposed in the candlelight.

“Keep talking,” he mumbles, content.

To his credit, Alex keeps telling him things, though when he gets John’s shirt off it devolves to utter nonsense. And to be fair, John’s not listening so much as he is absorbing the vibrations of Alex’s voice. Alexander runs his hands across John’s chest. They kneel up together and Alex puts his knee between John’s, letting him rut down on his thigh as they kiss. The scratch of all the layers of fabric is muted and torturous as they slide against him, and Alex holds him tight, messing with John’s curls and kissing all over his face. John giggles as he kisses his eyelids, feeling his lashes flutter against Alex’s lips. “Shh,” Alex says nonsensically.

John decides he needs all of Alexander at once. He pops buttons on his shirt in his haste to get at his skin, and he dives into his neck, peppering kisses down his jaw to his collarbone, hot breath puffing his loose hair back behind his shoulder.

Alexander moans after a bit and shoves John roughly, maneuvers him onto his back so that he can climb up to straddle his waist, wastes no time in setting his mouth to John’s chest. He flattens himself out against John, pressing their bare bellies together, sweat from the heat and the sudden flash of desire slicking his way as he slides down John’s body with kisses over every inch of skin he can reach. John is moaning by the time he gets to his navel, and Alex dips his tongue in, makes him gasp, and then he bites down on the pinch of extra skin just below and John howls, feeling his cock fill out as the pain cooks itself into a need that drives him to buck against Alex, who snickers, pressing his hips back to the bed. He’s still saying things every once in a while, but the noise he makes as he unbuttons John’s trousers and pulls his cock out is much preferable - a little whimper of want, and Alex takes his cock and rubs it against his lips, licks down his shaft a few times, never closing his mouth around it as he keeps his eyes on John’s.

John growls at the teasing, sits up abruptly to get Alex in his lap, and Alex gasps as his still-clothed groin slides against John’s solidity. John hoists him up and flips their positions, unlacing Alexander’s breeches and leaving little bites as he works his way down to Alex’s groin, taking his cock in hand and pumping lightly a few times to get it full for him before he swallows it down to the root and sucks. Alex whimpers again, this time louder and far more desperate. “Jesus, baby,” he breathes, running a hand frantically through John’s hair. “What are you trying to do to me? What’s gotten into you?”

John doesn’t pause until he needs a breath, at which point he pulls off Alexander’s cock only to slick his own hand down with saliva from the shaft, and he reaches back, toying with himself to work two fingers in at once. He grimaces at the initial intrusion but ultimately his impatience wins out, and he gets them in to the knuckle, gets his legs spread and his hips lowered so as to better reach. “Hopefully you,” he tells him before swallowing him down again, and Alex groans.

He fucks himself open slowly on his long, practiced fingers as Alex writhes beneath him, and eventually he’s panting and the hands in his tangled hair are trying to yank him back, and John sucks insistently for as long as he thinks he possibly can without bringing him off before he pulls back with a wet pop, strings of saliva running from his lips to Alex’s messy cock. Alex smiles at him, seeing him through a haze of lust. “Get your gorgeous ass up here, darling,” he tells him, and it’s unmistakably an order though it’s said so sweetly. John shudders.

He shimmies up the bed and Alex adjusts, planting his feet so as to cradle John in his hips so he can lay back against his thighs. Alexander is a little shorter and a little broader in general than John, and his cock is fat and curved just slightly to hit John just right inside. He relishes when Alexander fucks him, because he usually prefers to receive. John has no preference, in all honesty, but he needs out of his head right now. He settles over Alex, hovering on his knees, until Alex lays hands on his waist and encourages him down for a kiss. His cock nudges between John’s cheeks and John rubs off against Alex’s stomach, grinding up and down against him until his cock is leaking freely between them.

Alexander pulls away, gasping for breath. “That’s enough,” he grits out, wiggling his hips to get them impossibly closer. John sits back up, leans against the support of Alex’s thighs. He looks down at where they’re joined as Alexander lines himself up, tongue between his teeth in his concentration. John shoots him a giddy grin and then his jaw falls open as Alex breaches him, and the slight edge of pain is quickly drowned by pleasure as he sinks further into him, slowly burying himself to the hilt.

“Jesus,” Alex says again.

“He’s not even watching this house, Alex,” John says at barely above a whisper, because he can’t resist teasing even when they’re laid out together like this.

Alex runs his fingers down John’s stomach and drags his knuckles over the length of his cock, and John throws his head back in need. “Move,” Alexander growls, and John wastes no time. He lifts up and slams himself back down, the meat of his ass slapping against Alex’s thighs as he sits on him. Alex takes his weight happily, for now still running his hands up and down his sides, teasing every so often over the head of his cock. John is happy to let him explore, in no rush. He kind of wants Alexander to fill him forever just like this, fuck him till he’s past anything else and mad and ravenous for more.

Alexander seems just as unfocused, lost in John’s body up above him, letting himself really enjoy. He seems to understand the headspace John’s in, ready to embrace anything besides his day-to-day troubles, and whispers awed praises at him, things about how beautiful he is when he bites at his lips, indulgent epithets to the feel of his soft hair, the color of his eyes, the shape of his ass.

“And such a pretty cock,” he adds, fisting the head loosely. “Look at this, John,” and John looks, “it’s so responsive to me.” He stares as Alexander tugs at him expertly, never quite enough.

“God, you’re gonna be the death of me, John Laurens. You pretty thing, you filthy thing. You’re gonna kill me batting your eyelashes at me like that. Like a little whore.” Alex talks faster when he’s getting close, like he goes mad with it, the same habit as when he’s angry. Spitting out everything he can think of that might pertain, every minute detail that supports his case. His thrusts are becoming erratic, and he yanks John down against him, biting into his chest as he changes the angle to slam into John’s prostate in more rapid succession. John moans, rubbing against Alexander’s stomach again and finally - finally - he’s getting there, everything finally too much, a sweet overwhelm he revels in as Alexander tightens below him and comes.

John follows soon after him as Alex grinds his slowly softening cock into his prostate, wringing all of John’s orgasm from him from the inside out. John’s toes curl and little shivers run over every inch of his skin. He takes in what feels like his first full breath in a week, the tightness in his chest that had set in before they’d even headed out for South Carolina releasing as his lungs fill with air.

They lie together in the comedown, John’s head on Alexander’s chest, Alexander combing his fingers through his hair. John shifts, burying his face in Alex’s shoulder, flipping his hair out of his face. They’re too warm but they’ll deal with the sweat and the mess later.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Alex whispers against his hair. John nods sleepily, busying himself with the down comforter. He pulls it over their bodies and settles back in against Alexander.

“I never liked it when anyone called you Jack, anyway,” Alex says, yawning, and John laughs bitterly.

He can’t wait to go back to war.


End file.
